Will this wake you up?

June 1, 2008

Presence of a minority worship place can force the entire projects to get changed. When it comes to Hindus’ worship place or beliefs, you know what happens.

….an ancient mosque on a tiny patch of 1,200 square feet of land right next to a runway has forced a redrawing of the entire Rs 2,000-crore map to upgrade Kolkata airport. An extra 25,000 square metres has to be acquired, crores have to be spent on building a detour and several high-rise buildings have to be compensated because they have to knock off their top floors in line with the new plan.

….this is exactly where the 117-year old Bankra mosque — where on an average 30 people offer prayers each day under tight security — lies, less than 100 feet from the north end of the shorter runway, Also, the walls of the mosque cannot withstand vibrations caused by aircraft landing or taking off.

Result: the Airports Authority of India has decided to extend the runway towards the southern side.

“This means we have to lease out more than 25,000 square metres of land to the state government for the diversion,” says another official of he AAI. The AAI will spend Rs 2 crore and the state government will provide Rs 3 crore. Also, an existing road, running from Kaikhali to Narayanpur (Rajarhat) will need to be diverted.

Here is where the majority fails to make its political presence felt and the parties are struggling to remain friendly to the minorities. And then within the minority this is a special minority because, all credit to them, they make enough noise that the government would listen, and they turn up to vote in large numbers too. None of the other minorities is as perturbed and perturbing, and none of the other minorities have a commission to alleviate poverty in their community.

Bottomline : If Hindus keep voting in the pathetically low numbers then they will remain a political minority with very little or no say in the governance. Even Hindu sympathising parties like the BJP will not be able to bring back balanced secularistic approach if the Hindus remain masochistic by design.